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Transcending Race, Class, and Ideology Through Interest Convergence Georgetown University Law Center Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW 2005 Shall We Overcome? Transcending Race, Class, and Ideology Through Interest Convergence Sheryll Cashin Georgetown University Law Center, [email protected] This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1693 79 St. John's L. Rev. 253-291 This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub Part of the Law and Race Commons ARTICLES SHALL WE OVERCOME? TRANSCENDING RACE, CLASS, AND IDEOLOGY THROUGH INTEREST CONVERGENCE SHERYLL D. CASHIN' "[W]e believe that political relations are based on self-interest: benefits to be gained and losses to be avoided. For the most part, man's politics is determined by his evaluation of material good and evil. Politics results from a conflict of interests, not of consciences." 1 "The interest of blacks in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of whites. "2 In the past year we have celebrated a number of civil rights milestones: the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education;3 the fortieth anniversaries of the March on I Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center. I would like to thank Nina Pillard and James Forman for very helpful comments on an early draft of this paper and for the many constructive and thoughtful comments offered by law faculty who attended my presentation of this paper at both St. John's University School of Law and at Georgetown University. I would also like to thank my Research Assistant, Zhubin Parang, for his invaluable assistance. STOKELY CARMICHAEL & CHARLES V. HAMILTON, BLACK POWER: THE POLITICS OF LIBERATION IN AMERICA 75 (1967). 2 Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma, 93 HARV. L. REV. 518, 523 (1980). ' 347 U.S. 483 (1954). ST. JOHN'S LAWREVIEW [Vol. 79:253 Washington and of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 4 Collectively our nation now venerates our most progressive, socially transforming legal edicts, even as we accept, or ignore, persistent racial inequality. Much has been written about the limits and modern meaning of Brown.5 Elsewhere I have argued that we have failed to live up to the integrationist vision that animated Brown and the civil rights movement, primarily because our neighborhoods remain largely segregated by race and class.6 In this Article, I celebrate the coalition politics that made the civil rights revolution possible with a view toward understanding how and why coalition politics of the progressive kind seem to be stymied today. I argue that the thesis of interest convergence advanced by Professor Derrick Bell, while pessimistic in its outlook, offers a key insight into human nature and American race relations 4 Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241. 5 See, e.g., DERRICK BELL, SILENT COVENANTS: BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION AND THE UNFULFILLED HOPES FOR RACIAL REFORM 6-7 (2004) (arguing, inter alia, that the Supreme Court's declaration that separate facilities were inherently unequal legitimated current unequal arrangements by suggesting that those who remain poor and disempowered had simply failed to take advantage of their definitially equal status); MICHAEL J. KLARMAN, FROM JIM CROW TO CIVIL RIGHTS: THE SUPREME COURT AND THE STRUGGLE FOR RACIAL EQUALITY 441-42, 467-68 (2004); CHARLES J. OGLETREE, JR., ALL DELIBERATE SPEED: REFLECTIONS ON THE FIRST HALF CENTURY OF BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION 311 (2004) (arguing that the unfulfilled legacy of Brown reflects our nation's limited commitment to racial justice); MARK V. TUSHNET, BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION: THE BATTLE FOR INTEGRATION 129-33 (1995) (arguing that Brown's principal effect was not to integrate schools, but to motivate and strengthen the burgeoning civil rights movement); Lani Guinier, From Racial Liberalism to Racial Literacy: Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Divergence Dilemma, 91 J. OF AM. HIST. 92, 95-96 (2004) (arguing that Brown "redefine[d] equality, not as a fair and just distribution of resources, but as the absence of formal, legal barriers that separated the races" and "convinced working-class whites that their interests lay in white solidarity rather than collective cross-racial mobilization"); Gary Orfield & Chungmei Lee, Brown at 50: King's Dream or Plessy's Nightmare? (Harvard University/Civil Rights Project, Cambridge, M.A.), Jan. 2004, at 40 (arguing, inter alia, that school segregation has been increasing since the 1990s and that a renewed commitment to integration is needed, which would involve appointing Brown- friendly judges and civil rights enforcement officials, reviving federal aid programs that confront race relations issues, and providing financial incentives to white suburban schools that accept segregated minority students), available at http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/resegO4/brown50.pdf; Mark Tushnet, Public Law Litigation and the Ambiguities of Brown, 61 FORDHAM L. REV. 23, 25, 27-28 (1992) (arguing that Brown's "all deliberate speed" standard, authored by Justice Frankfurter in an attempt to limit the expansive reach of Brown, ironically greatly expanded the Court's ability to impact social policy). 6 See generally SHERYLL CASHIN, THE FAILURES OF INTEGRATION: HOW RACE AND CLASS ARE UNDERMINING THE AMERICAN DREAM (2004). 2005] SHALL WE OVERCOME? that can and should be harnessed in order to build the sustainable multiracial coalitions that will be necessary if we are to close existing gaps of racial inequality. The civil rights movement ultimately succeeded not only because it had moral force, but also because a powerful, well-organized grassroots effort altered the understanding of a voting majority in Congress as to what was in their enlightened self-interest and in the interest of the nation. I explore below the possibilities for progressives to recapture majoritarian politics based upon a convergence of interests among communities of color, working class, and progressive whites. A key challenge, as Bell and others suggest, is whether racial ideology often, but not exclusively, harbored by whites can be transcended by engaging7 seemingly disparate groups in the language of self-interest. In Part I of this Article, I explore the coalition politics that made it possible to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the coalition theory that animated this movement. I then discuss Bell's interest-convergence thesis and related arguments offered by other scholars and social advocates who are skeptical about the possibilities for mutual cooperation between blacks and other groups, particularly whites. I argue that it is unsurprising that any social group in power would oppose policies that they perceive to be contrary to their self-interest, even in the face of moral counterweights. Acknowledging this dark aspect of human nature, I nevertheless conclude that broad coalitions for progressive change are theoretically possible when common interests, or a convergence of perceived self-interest, can be established. In Part II, I test this premise in the modern context, examining the challenges to progressive coalition building presented by our nation's new and increasing racial complexity. I canvass recent political science literature regarding the theory and practice of multiracial coalition building, exploring how inter-group relational dynamics have changed since the civil rights movement. I see both promise and peril in demographic ' Professor Bell might use "racism" where I use "racial ideology." See DERRICK BELL, FACES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL: THE PERMANENCE OF RACISM 13, 198-99 (1992). By "racial ideology," I mean any type of commitment or belief of a racial nature, conscious or unconscious, that might inhibit someone from joining a coalition that otherwise is advancing public policies that are in that person's rational self- interest. See discussion infra Part II.A.2 for a more detailed analysis. ST. JOHN'S LAW REVIEW [Vol. 79:253 trends. With rising diversity, it is increasingly unlikely that a single racial group can succeed independently in pursuing a progressive policy agenda. In racially diverse contexts, coalition building is the only route to meaningful political power. Diversity, then, can be a source of power if properly harnessed. The risk with ever-complex diversity, however, is that the transaction costs of inter-group negotiations and the possibility for conflict rise with each new group or interest that must be incorporated. There is an especially heightened risk that racial and ethnic minorities will perceive their relative interests in zero-sum terms. More importantly, the chief obstacle to multiracial coalition building appears to be the persistence of negative racial stereotypes, especially those held about African Americans. I offer hopeful examples of successful multiracial coalitions that have transcended potential race and class conflicts and, therefore, altered the status quo in a policymaking context. Building off these examples, I argue that the best route to creating a more enlightened understanding of how the interests of seemingly strange bedfellows do converge is through leadership and grassroots organization fueled by the artful dissemination of empirical data. This is labor-intensive and challenging, but necessary, work. While the path of least resistance is to work solely within single issue or single identity constituencies, progressives will be increasingly disempowered without alliances and relationships across boundaries of race and class. I. THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND INTEREST GROUP CONVERGENCE The Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law on July 2 of that year, after fifty-seven days of debate.8 Among the other iconic events of that hot summer were the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney in Mississippi, and the Birmingham church bombing that killed four little girls.9 A 8 See Linda Parker, Civil Rights Act of 1964 Remains a Lofty Pursuit Still in Progress, DETROIT NEWS, July 29, 2004, at A17; They Did Go On, WASH.
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